Best of 2023
Tender Membranes
Tender Membranes is the the label’s first release from Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electro-acoustic composer Marja Ahti. Active for a decade in the Finnish underground music scene, in recent years Ahti has developed a distinctive approach to patiently unfolding electro-acoustic constructions, documented on a string of solo releases and collaborative projects with Judith Hamann and her husband Niko-Matti Ahti.
Working with concrete and instrumental sounds, field recordings, and electronics, …
In Là
Timed in celebration of his 80th birthday, the venerable imprint, Alga Marghen, releases “In Là”, a stunning LP comprising a brand-new work by the groundbreaking English composer Gavin Bryars
Bengt "Frippe" Nordström
Second edition. 300 copies, all parts identical to the first edition For the past decade, Mats Gustafsson has fastidiously produced and compiled the most thorough and comprehensive collection of archival solo recordings of the late legendary Swedish saxophonist and eccentric archivist of free music activity in Sweden, Bengt “Frippe” Nordström (1936–2000). Bringing together rare and unreleased recordings taken from an extensive collection of home-recorded solo sax improvisations, it documents his…
Baraka
** Special mirroring/olographic cover. Edition of 300 copies ** After his participation in a masterpiece such as Popol Vuh’s Hosianna Mantra, in the early 1980s Klaus Wiese produced a series of seminal works in the field of ambient-drone and healing music. The first of these, Baraka, was released on tape by Acquamarin in 1981, and already contained all the aspects of his future research into the mysticism of sound. Wiese shares the path with other German explorers such as Michael Peter Hamel, …
The Heavyweight Sound Fight
Brimming with equal parts humor and rigorous art, iDEAL Recordings delivers one of the most fascinating and historically important archival releases that's aver graced our hands, Charlie Morrow, Sten Hanson, and Carles Santos' “The Heavyweight Sound Fight”. Documenting a never before released performance staged in NY during 1981, three seminal artists join forces for a battle in sound, delivering raucous vocal utterances against the backdrop of dualing band and wild experimental interventions, m…
Interview with Charlie Morrow
Recital presents a newly unearthed recording of an interview between Sun Ra and composer Charlie Morrow recorded at his New York studio in 1989. This voice-only recording develops more like a kaleidoscopic sermon than any standard interview.
Resolve
Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excite…
Out There in the Middle of Nowhere
*Limited edition of 500 copies* Experimental musician John Also Bennett’s latest full-length emerged from a bicoastal pandemic road trip through the badlands of South Dakota. Moved by the scale and complexity of the landscape – “remnants of an ancient seafloor mixed with the ash of a volcanic eruption, eroded over millennia and now resembling the tangled folds of earth’s brain” – he sculpted a series of stark, microtonal arrangements using a 1940’s Oahu lap steel guitar, a Yamaha SY77 multi-timb…
Extensions
McCoy Tyner looked towards Africa on his stunning 1970 album Extensions, a far-reaching exploration of Black identity that marked the masterful pianist’s fifth recording for Blue Note Records. After leaving John Coltrane’s band Tyner had moved from Impulse to Blue Note and made his enduring post-bop classic The Real McCoy in 1967. In the following years Tyner steadily expanded his musical scope: writing for a 9-piece ensemble on Tender Moments, exploring the textures of a piano-vibes led quartet…
A Day Of The Sun
** Coloured Vinyl edition ** A spiritual jazz masterpiece full of poetry by two geniuses of the Japanese musical scene. Masahiko Togashi and Isao Suzuki, pivotal figures in jazz with a unique talent and sensitivity that transcends conventional jazz forms and styles. In addition to being skilled performers they demonstrate extraordinary compositional talent that transcends their sensibilities and wisdom of more conventional jazz.
They are together a wonderful combination of techniques, but witho…
Distant Dosage
*Repress of 250 copies on clear vinyl with insert* Robert Turman first came onto the industrial scene in the late 70’s as the ominous ‘other half’ of legendary noise outfit NON. Shortly after recording the classic 1977 single Mode of Infection, Turman went on to pursue his own unique vision as a solo artist. Fusing every possible influence at his disposal while laying his ideas down on self-released cassettes like Flux (1981), Spirals of Everlasting Change (1987), Way Down (1987) and the massive…
Electronic Music from 1972-2022
Electronic Music from 1972-2022 seeks to frame fifty years of Carl Stone's compositional activity, starting with Stone's earliest professionally presented compositions from 1972 ("Three Confusongs" and "Ryound Thygyzunz", featuring the voice and poetry of Stefan Weiser – later known as Z'EV) up to the present. This collection is not meant as a definitive history but rather as a supplement to be used alongside the previous two archival releases. It is simultaneously an archival release marking Ca…
Power Failures
Huge Tip! The New York based duo of Che Chen and Rick Brown, 75 Dollar Bill, return with Power Failures, their first full length since 2020. Issued as a beautiful double LP by Karlrecords, and possibly their best record to date - taking on expanded explorations and a greater sense of abstraction - across its four sides we encounter Chen and Brown interweaving hypnotic polyrhythms and complex tonal collisions, with occasional (and brilliant) contributions from "Little Big Band" mainstays Steve Ma…
Lettera Cosmica
Huge Tip! Since the 1970s Mario De Leo works as a musician and visual artist. His mechanical paintings are hybrid works that reveal the cosmic spiritualism hidden in the meanders of electronics. With Riccardo Sinigaglia (Futuro Antico, Correnti Magnetiche, Doubling Riders) De Leo consolidates an artistic and human partnership with Lettera Cosmica, a work unpublished to date, produced and recorded in 1981. In a wacky electronic vision of the succession of time, the tracks trace the four seasons i…
Nana Vasconcelos Nelson Angelo - Novelli
Cult album of Brazilian music finally reissued. Official reissue of this real tour de force of Brazilian creativity, where the mighty Naná Vasconcelos is joined by his friends Nelson Angelo and Novelli (both members of the legendary Clube da Esquina) to create one of the greatest Brazilian albums ever recorded outside of Brazil. The three musicians grasp here for the kind of musical freedom that could then only be achieved outside of their country. A boundary-pushing experimentation that makes y…
Solo For Tamburium
With Solo for Tamburium, Hennix plays and manipulates recordings of her precisely tuned and continuously sustained tamburas through a keyboard interface, fusing tones into psychoacoustic textures in the style of her early modal works
Osmose
LP version. Reissue of the 1970 krautrock classic. The timing was right: Five years earlier would have been too early, five years later would have been too late. But Annexus Quam from Kamp-Lintfort near Düsseldorf came along with the right music at the right moment. The seven-piece band formed in 1967 as Ambition Of Music; they were what was then called a "beat group." In 1970, working with a local trombone choir led to a dramatic change of direction. Trombone, clarinet, saxophone, scat-like voc…
Beziehungen
Super Tip! LP version. Re-release of the second album by Annexus Quam, originally released in 1972. Transferred from the original master tapes and carefully remastered by HaGü Schmitz and Dieter Wegner. The timing was right: Five years earlier would have been too early, five years later would have been too late. But Annexus Quam from Kamp-Lintfort near Düsseldorf came along with the right music at the right moment. The seven-piece band formed in 1967 as Ambition Of Music; they were what was then…
Of Shadow and Substance
Acclaimed NYC composer, producer and saxophonist Lea Bertucci explores dissonance, drone and dynamics with two new longform compositions for strings, electronics, harp and percussion on "Of Shadow and Substance".
Writings
** 2023 Repress ** Writings is the first collection to widely survey the singular Tony Conrad polymath’s prolific activity as a writer. Edited by artists Constance DeJong and Andrew Lampert, the book spans the years 1961 – 2012 and includes fifty-seven pieces: essays originally published in small press magazines, exhibition catalogs, anthologies, and album liner notes, along with other previously unpublished texts. Conrad writes about his own work, with substantial contributions on The Flicker, …